APPRECIATION\Minnie Pearl shined with Grand Ole Opry.

Byline: Bruce McCabe Boston Globe

There's a photo of Sara Ophelia Colley playing the Grand Ole Opry piano in 1940 and, as the caption notes, she's performing without her trademark, a $1.98 price tag dangling from her straw hat.

Other trademarks were a loud, cheerful "Howdyyyy!" with a toothy grin and her calico and gingham dresses. As Minnie Pearl, she was not only the first woman to perform on the Opry. More importantly, she became, long before dying Monday night in Nashville at the age of 83, one of the funniest women in entertainment.

The Opry was an NBC radio show broadcast from Nashville that featured a young singer named Eddy Arnold. Ophelia, as she was called, was the fifth daughter in the family of a prominent lumberman and his cultured wife, born in Centerville, Tenn., 50 miles southwest of Nashville. She grew up as what was called then a "tomboy."

Ophelia showed interest in the stage and her mother gave her what were called "expression lessons." Ophelia watched vaudeville shows in Nashville while her mother went on shopping trips. She became enamored of a slapstick comedienne named Elviry Weaver, who reminded her of her favorite movie comediennes Marjorie Main and Marie Dressler.

Television and radio should live so long that they develop a franchise as rock-solid and durable as the Grand Ole Opry, with its genuine, unaffected appeal. Pearl, who became the apotheosis of female country humor, helped build the franchise along with Arnold.

She graduated from high school and was enrolled in Ward-Belmont College in Nashville, an elite finishing school for young ladies. She tried teaching, but it didn't work. She took a job with a traveling producing company and appeared in amateur musical comedies in remote rural areas.

Minnie Pearl was born when Ophelia met a fine old mountain woman in 1936 in Baileyton, Ala., who kept her laughing at her stories for days. "After 10 days with her, I began to quote her and people would laugh. She was like Granny on 'Beverly Hillbillies,' " Pearl told me in 1965 between sets of a rehearsal on the Opry stage, where I'd been dispatched by a Boston newspaper to find out what country music was all about.

Ophelia polished her character and, at 28, auditioned in 1940 as "Minnie Pearl" for the Opry. She was almost rejected because of her finishing school background. "We don't want anyone thinking you're a phony," she was told. Finally, she was given a late-night Saturday spot to fail in so no one would notice. After she performed, she asked her mother, who watched her, how it went. Her mother, no slouch with a quip, said, "Several people woke up."

"That was the finest compliment that's ever been paid me," Pearl recalled. And the best advice? "Roy Acuff telling me that it was not only OK to be silly but that that's what he wanted."

The compliment was only the first of many. In 1975, she was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame. She'd already been voted Country Music Woman of the Year in 1966 by the Country Music Association.

One of her late career triumphs was an appearance on "Comic Relief" in 1986 where she received, along with Robin Williams and Billy Crystal, a standing ovation.

She was diagnosed with cancer in 1985 and underwent a double mastectomy. She recovered and continued to perform and do volunteer work with the American Cancer Society. In 1987, she received the Society's Courage Award; in 1993, she was among 13 recipients of a National Medal of Arts.

She's survived by her husband, Henry Cannon, a commercial pilot who flew her to many of her appearances. She married him in 1947, by which time she'd polished her act. "I'm the luckiest girl in show business," she said. "I married my transportation."

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Photo Minnie Pearl, with that famous $1.98 price tag dangling from her hat, was the Grand Ole Opry's first female performer.